Esperanto · Chapter 8 · Lesson 14 · Grammar primer
The affixes ek-, re-, -ad-, dis-, mis-
Ekdormi is to fall asleep, dormadi is to sleep on and on. The aspect affixes: how Esperanto says begin, again, keep on, apart and wrongly without extra verbs.
The short version
ek- starts it, -ad- keeps it going
Esperanto has no aspect ending, because aspect lives in the affixes on a separate axis from tense. Ek- marks the moment you cross into an action: dormi is to sleep, ekdormi is to fall asleep. -ad- marks duration or repetition: dormadi is to sleep on and on. All three of li ekdormis, li dormis and li dormadis are past, because the affix shapes the event and the ending places it in time.
li ekdormis, li dormis, li dormadis
Watch the false friends
Re-, dis- and mis- are as productive as ek-: reveni is to come back, disdoni is to hand out, miskompreni is to misunderstand. But a word starting with those letters is not necessarily built from them. Ekzisti, ekster and ekzemplo have no ek- in them; resti, respondi and revo have no re-; diversa has no dis- and mistero has no mis-. The root comes first, and the affix has to be a real morpheme rather than a coincidence of spelling.
reveni, resti
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